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Pop Culture's Zombie Craze Reflects Death-Fears

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal says, "By all observable metrics, zombies are totally hot right now." Another article claims that zombies have become "outrageously, staggeringly, mindblowingly popular … Not only do they top best-seller lists and video games and the iPad, the undead dominate television, too." With nearly 16 million viewers, The Walking Dead, AMC's hit TV show about a world dominated by flesh-eating zombies, nearly outperformed the 2014 Winter Olympics. World War Z, a movie about a zombie apocalypse starring Brad Pitt, has so far grossed over $540 million.

So what's the big deal with this zombie craze? One expert on zombie lore, Dr. John Ulrich, Professor of English at Mansfield University, says, "At its most elemental level, of course, the zombie represents our fear of death." Stephen Marche, a cultural critic who writes for Esquire magazine agrees, but as an atheist Marche offers some honest thoughts about zombies and our death-fears. In his article titled "Why Zombies Are Everywhere Now," Marche writes:

After seeing dozens of zombie movies, I'm convinced that the reason zombies are so powerful is that they capture an atheistic fear of the dead. I don't just mean the fear of dead bodies, though that fear is there, too … materialistic atheism … does not provide a very comforting way to deal with the dead. Christians and others have prayer and visions of an afterlife … Atheists like myself have rotting corpses and oblivion. And zombie movies.

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